My problem is I've yet to get it to work. The virtualbox initially shows a "Centos 6.4" stripe along the bottom
of the screen as it boots but then the VM seems to hang with the screen as shown. I've followed the
directions as shown on the above web page but with no luck so far.

I'm running version 4.3.10 r93012 of Virtualbox on a Windows XP ...(more)

I was more thinking along the lines of Windows XP being downright ancient by now. If a different platform yielded the same result, that is likely not the issue though. (I shall assume it was Debian 3 you tried :-)

It was a recent Debian installed for the purpose, not currently on a running box. In any event Win XP, Win 7,
Win Vista +WIn old uncle Tom Cobbley and all, all have the same Win 32 API so Virtualbox would simply run like any other application.

Comments

When the VM is booting (and you see that "stripe at the bottom") hit <escape> which should display the services as they are starting and you should be able to see which service it stops at. If you really feel like digging your heels in, you could build a separate CentOS VM, to attach the vmdk to.